AB de Villiers reveals he played with a detached retina in his right eye for last 2 years of his career

AB de Villiers retired from all formats of cricket in 2021 before calling time on international career in 2018.

Former South Africa cricketer AB de Villiers is considered to be an all-time great thanks to his tremendous batting ability and for being a team man. Apart from batting, he could bowl medium pacers and even keep wickets for proteas in all three formats.

He led South African side in all three formats as well, including the heartbreaking semi-finals of the 2015 World Cup. AB de Villiers shockingly retired from international cricket in 2018.

However, he tried to return to international cricket for 2019 World Cup and continued to play in franchise cricket till 2021. More than two years after his last professional match, in the 2021 IPL, AB de Villiers has told journalist Melinda Farrell about an eye injury he had sustained just about when he had retired.

“My youngster accidentally kicked me in my eye with his heel. I started really losing vision in the right eye. When I got the surgery done the doctor actually asked me, ‘How in the world did you play cricket like this?’. Luckily my left eye did a decent job for the last two years of my career,” De Villiers was quoted by Wisden.

AB de Villiers on not trying to reverse his retirement

De Villiers also owned up on how he wanted to make a comeback for proteas for 2019 World Cup. But revealed the reason why he didn’t reverse his retirement decision.

He said, “Covid certainly played a role, there’s no doubt about it. From an international perspective, that 2015 World Cup hurt big time. It took me a while to get over that and then, when I got back into the side and I was ready to commit, I didn’t feel the same culture that I really needed at that time.

I often found myself thinking, I don’t know, eh? Could this be the end of my career? I didn’t even really want to play IPL or anything else. I got away from everything in 2018 and then decided to push one more time with a bit of Test cricket, to try and beat India and Australia over here, and then I’ll call it. I didn’t want any spotlight on me. I just wanted to say, I had a great time, thank you very much.”

Meanwhile, de Villiers mentioned that he was delighted to know that South Africa’s white-ball coach Rob Walter urged Quinton de Kock not to retire from international cricket altogether.

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